TRADITIONAL DISHES

• Caldo or Cocido -- these are general terms for stews, but in Zacatecas the traditional recipe consists of three kinds of meat (beef, pig and chicken), string beans, garbanzos, small squash, sweetcorn, a bit of rice, onion, garlic and saffron. Upon serving, the vegetables are separated from the stew, and then the dishes are eaten with a great deal of chili sauce.

 

• Gorditas -- biscuit-like packages of cooked cornmeal, lard and salt, stuffed with beanpaste and chili.

 

• Condoches --gorditas made with sweetcorn mixed with cinnamon, milk, sugar and vanilla, cooked atop corn leaves.

 

• Birria -- small chunks of goat or sheep, or both, smothered in chili sauce, garlic, salt, thyme, cumin, black pepper and cinnamon.

 

• Menudo -- cow rumen stewed with chilies.

 

 

SWEETS

• Capirotada -- white bread fried with slices of bread alternating with cheese, peanuts, potato, nuts and preserved biznaga cactus, all bathed in honey or unrefined brown sugar.

 

• Queso de Tuna -- candy made from prickly pear cactus, sometimes prepared with nuts.

 

• Camote -- the word camote means sweet potato; when a sweet is being referred to, it's a candied sweet- potato cut into bars and wrapped in paper.

 

• Biznaga -- candied cactus of the genus Mammillaria.

 

• Gordita de Cuajada or Gordita de Horno -- a gordita filled with goat-milk cheese that is ground with corn, milk, sugar and cinnamon

 

DRINKS

• Pulque -- mildly intoxicating drink made by fermenting the sap, or aguamiel, of the maguey agave.

 

• Mezcal -- distilled from pulque.

 

• Colonche -- fermented macerated cactus fruit and sugar.